The drop-shadowed, fixed-width, “vertical layer floating over textured or solid background” effect seems very much in demand these days: Blogger, Powazek, StopDesign, Sidesh0w, just to name a few — and now Six Apart. Is it just me, or is every site redesign starting to look like Happy Cog?

In fact, the width of Six Apart’s main container div is exactly the same width as the Blogger Dashboard. Observe:

Update: It’s with some chagrin that I correct myself: Sidesh0w is not fixed width, and if I’d just bothered to wiggle my browser window a bit, I’d have seen it for myself. There’s a new CSS trick I need to master.

Comments

I’m going to guess that, since Zeldman redesigned Blogger, it’s a signature “trademark” sort of look for him. I did notice a lot of that same visual element in many web sites, too. Kind of like when Photoshop first got big and then every printed brochure with a photo started to get drop shadows.